Just a quick post so that my few readers will know I’m not dead.
I keep getting comments on this post. The Paul Robeson video has attracted four pages of fan comments at YouTube. You can read them here. And it’s even more surprising to me that I’ve attracted no anti-labor comments or rants from Robeson haters.
My post about Mack Harrell also continues to draw comments. In going back to it I discover that YouTube has removed the short Fauré Requiem excerpt. By way of turning the other cheek, here’s some more Mack Harrell, a recording I didn’t know about (and that I will be looking for) of “An die ferne Geliebte.” I’m especially glad to have discovered it because this song cycle was the first thing I studied with Mr. Harrell and the first piece I ever performed as his student.
I said maybe I would tell some stories. Here are a couple. As serious as he was about his vocation, Mr. Harrell was funny too—like the day we started working on the “Schöne Müllerin,” when he came in the studio in a straw hat with a stalk of grass in his teeth. I never called him Mack as some others of his students did; I noticed early on that they only did that behind his back. I also recall that he took a phone call from Rudolf Bing in the middle of one of my lessons once and told Bing that he wouldn’t return to the Metropolitan Opera for the next season, saying he had decided to “forgo opera.” I didn’t know that day that he already knew he was dying.
But the best memory I have is this one. I had failed to get an opera role for which I had auditioned, and I was depressed. When I arrived for my lesson the next day, Mr. Harrell played and sang for me a Schumann song, “Stirb Lieb’ und Freud’.” In it a young woman decides to take the veil, and her lover must reconcile himself to losing her forever. It’s a strophic song, beautifully simple and sublime, refining the emotions of which it treats and rendering them monumental. “We need to remember when we lose things,” Mr. Harrell said, “that there are still lots of good songs left in the world.” I remembered that in the summer of 1959 at Aspen, when he sang a group of Mendelssohn songs he had never sung before.
I like your comments about Robeson and your voice teacher. So he died rather young ? It was a good meeting tonight.
we need those new windows for sure.
Hi, Allyce. I think we made a good decision last night, and I don’t think we’ll have any problem getting the windows done. Thanks very much for your help. Mack Harrell died at 50 from lung cancer. There’s a pretty good Wikipedia bio, if you want to Google him.
Julian, I just happened in here and have so enjoyed these magnificent songs. I never got to hear Mack Harrell sing but I got to know his namesake son, nicknamed Bud, in my last year at SMU (’62-’63). His and Lynn’s mother had died just months before and they were completely on their own. I have kept up with Lynn’s career but don’t know what became of Bud.
Your name sounds familiar; I wonder whether we met at SMU. Were you an English major as well as a voice student? I see you went in for some serious English majoring later on.
Hi, Jean. Thanks for stopping by. I knew both Harrell boys very slightly, not so much as to be remembered. There was also a daughter, I think, but I’ve forgotten her name. I was at SMU from 1959 until 1962. My undergraduate career was partly an exercise in reluctantly giving up the idea of a singing career. It took me six years to get a bachelor’s degree. Then I got an M. A. in 1962 and went to Denton to teach school at North Texas. I was an English major at SMU most of the time. Maybe we had some classes together. Your name sounds familiar to me as well. The SMU English professors I spent most time with were Bond, Covici, and Perrine. I was also close to John Bowyer and loved his Shakespeare class, sang with Calvin Smith in the Dallas Opera chorus, enjoyed a novel course with Kenneth Shields. Ima Herron directed My M. A. thesis. Were you an English Major too?
Boy, was I ever! I was there 1959-63, and from sophomore year on I was one of the part-time secretaries in the English department, so I worked closely with Dr. Bowyer who was chairman. Who could forget his amazing Shakespeare course, and Dr. Perrine’s Victorian Age, and Covici’s American Novel! I kept in touch with the Covicis for years afterwards. I loved Shields and Smith and Herron, too. I’ll bet we had a class or two together; wish I could locate my yearbook from ’61 or ’62 to remind me of your face. I was also active in the Methodist Student Movement and Campus Y but became an Episcopalian in later years, which is how I ended up clicking over here from Nick Knisely’s blog. I’ll stop in now and then!
One of the things I loved about SMU English was that the courses were a year long. I had all the classes you mention plus many others. The university made me take a couple of extra social science courses because I had too many hours in my major. I took George Bond’s creative writing class twice—had to get special permission for the second year. I became an Episcopalian in 1973. Nice to know you’re one too, and that you’ll come back. Knisely’s blog is very good. I admire him.
There’s a page of photos here that includes a youthful picture of me, if you want to look.